Five Police killed in Dallas

Five Dallas police officers were fatally shot and seven others wounded during a protest over the deaths of black men killed by police this week in Louisiana and Minnesota – the deadliest day for US law enforcement since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Police Chief David Brown blamed “snipers,” but it was unclear how many shooters were involved. Authorities initially said three suspects were in custody and a fourth dead, killed by a robot-delivered bomb in a parking garage where he had exchanged fire with officers.

Before dying, the police chief said, the suspect told officers he was upset about recent shootings and wanted to kill whites, “especially white officers.” The man also stated that he acted alone and was not affiliated with any groups, Brown said.

Many are upset over recent shootings, but what he has done is make such shootings more likely, not less. Plus five families have lost a family member, and will never recover.

Incredibly sad. If others were involved, hopefully they will be held accountable.

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Comments (149)

stephieboy

cmm,all the President is doing is addressing the issue racial divide that still persists in American life today. He is by no stretch of the imagination endorsing the shooting of the Police nor justifying the actions of the likes of Xavier Johnson

Shawn Herles , I refer you to my post at 10.11 “Breakdown of the Black family.The Myth Of The Absent Black Father” I would say a welcome respite from your moralising , patronising and factually incorrect cut and pastes !

Mr_Blobby

The Police seem to see themselves as some sort of military unit rather than as civilian Police.

How are you “protecting and serving” when you shoot someone for getting their license out, after you have asked them to get it out in the first place.

For those in favor of an armed Police Force and an unarmed population, it is a self defeating downward spiral. it is the fist thing any totalitarian government does, disarm the population.

Imagine the carnage if we routinely armed our Police, the victims would be civilians shot by Police, Police shooting themselves and each other, gangs arming themselves more than they already are.

The problem is that you need more and more Police and ever more repression of the people to stay in control.

That said, the biggest threat to any Government is not criminals but the general population (mob).

Being a Police officer is far from being the most dangerous job in New Zealand and it is a very thin blue line.

The problem I see with the US Police is their willingness to cover up these incidents when they happen. Without transparency and accountability you will eventually degenerate into open warfare on the streets. We have seen something similar here the trained professional who shot a courier driver going about his business, on the north western motorway, has never been named or held to account.

What concerns me most is the distinct drop in standards of our Police force.

Harriet

The 2nd amendment was introduced because the British were coming – not because of the up coming deer season.

The 2nd amendment is looked at being weakened because the Marxists, muslims and progressives have arrived – not because of civilian uprising.

The 2nd amendment is there to protect the other 9, which in turn protects the rights and liberties of every single American citizen.

The 2nd amendment is a pillar to their constitutional democracy.

Social justice warriors, such as this idiot and that gay muslim bloke, are arming themselves and going against the state – and in return the state wants to take away the rights of protecting the constitution.

Harriet

SPC

Shawn, Volckers (beating stagflation with higher unemployment to lower inflation – their form of 1984 market reform) recession destroyed the lives of workers, many black – leaving them dependent on welfare. Welfare does not cause job loss. Job loss lead men leaving families to sole parent welfare while they moved to find work – further west or south. The resulting inner city decay in the NE with black youth raised on welfare led to a crime explosion (many imprisoned for decades this time).

They blamed this on welfare and brought in faith based provider reform and term limits. But whenever there is a recession in which the middle class lose jobs they extend term limits coz white lives matter.

“The Police seem to see themselves as some sort of military unit rather than as civilian Police.”

I think it would be more accurate to say that the Police have in fact been militarised, and yes, that is part of the problem. The militarisation of the police is a direct consequence of the war on drugs, and one of the reasons that, as a conservative note, I oppose the war on drugs.

Treating drug addiction as a purely medical/health issue, rather than a war, would go some way to solving some of these issues. The WoD, in militarising local police, has helped create a wedge and a profound lack of trust between local police and the communities they serve.

bc

Shawn, I was wondering why you were putting up cut and pastes opinion pieces about socio-economic factors of black people in a discussion about police shooting people. It seemed like victim-blaming to me, but if you say it wasn’t I’m prepared to accept that at face value.

Blaming a culture of gun violence on liberals is just silly when you would probably say it is liberals that are trying to take the guns away!

The so-called “culture of gun violence” is just a liberal-lefty meme to cover up the negative social consequences of the liberal-left’s war against traditional moral values. I blame Liberals for that, and for the welfare system that LBJ created in his “Great Society” program. While as SPC rightly notes it is not the only factor in this, it is certainly an important one.

SGA

For the all the talk here of poverty and crime among blacks in America, this gunman appears to have been raised in a middle-classish neighbourhood, spent 6 years as an army reservist (including serving in Afghanistan), and had no criminal record of note (at least that’s what I’ve seen to this point).

SPC

Kimbo

@ SPC

SGA, a similar profile to some of the Islamists who choose to be active for their identity cause.

Which is why, according to this source, the usual “culprits” of poverty and marginalisation are not the cause of radicalisation – whether jihadism, or the radical anti-establishment rhetoric leading up to and surrounding the Dallas police killings, which undoubtedly had its precursors with the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, etc.

All_on_Red

All_on_Red

SGA
Was he unemployed? Didn’t someone say he was living with his mother.
Six years is quite a long time to serve. I imagine it would be difficult to serve your country and face danger like he had and then come back to nothing.
Perhaps that lack of purpose through work leads to going down the wrong path.

Manolo

stephieboy

kimbo , I think the explanation for the tragic shootings , based on what we know , is rather simple . Xavier Johnson an ex Army reservists was extremely angry about the recent shootings by police.

He decided to take extreme measures , unlike the other protestors at Dallas . His actual motive will take some time to unravel .It seems also that he appears not to be your stereotyped poverty stricken ,from a single parent African American.

kowtow

Much is being said here , in ignorance, about the “militarisation” of the American police.

To those who think the American police are trigger happy / militarised , go away and look up the 1986 FBI Miami Dade county shoot out and the 1997 North Hollywood shootout.

No professional organisation can put its staff on the streets following those incidents in good conscience without ‘proper equipment’.Those battles changed the philosophy of policing in the US forever. Blame the crim not the cop.

The American police face illegally well armed and determined criminals on an historically almost unprecedented level and this Dallas shooting will add yet another chapter.

On top of that there have always been shootings of police by dangerous criminals during routine traffic stops. That is why patrol men are trained there to be particularly vigilant . It is exactly at times when one is expecting nothing to happen , guard is down , when the shit hits the fan.

It is a fact of life that American criminals ( criminals world wide ) have access to illegal firearms and are very ready to use them…..again blame the crim . Not the cop.

The same thing has happened in the Uk , back in the 60s the Bobby on the beat could take a relaxed approach to most incidents but that changed when crims started taking firearms to incidents and being prepared to use them.

1966 Shepherds Bush murders being the most notorious. Now murdering police is almost common place there.

The death penalty would probably be a good deterent to armed robbery but in these “progressive” days will never happen.

All_on_Red

Reid

As the chaos unfolded late Thursday night in Dallas, I was struck by how many members of the media insisted the protest was peaceful and we have to remain calm. Who are these people, my high school teacher? I’m tuning in to learn how many cops are dead. My reaction to it is none of your business.

The reason these reporters were acting like teachers is that’s how they see themselves. They don’t just report the news, they Voxplain it. Of course, the problem with thought control is you need to keep correcting the course. First they tell us “racism is alive and well” and we should be disgusted with our country, but when that starts a riot, they backpedal and tell us we’re overreacting. This is how socialism works. You circle-kick the pendulum away from a problem and when it goes smashing through the cuckoo clock, you scramble to swing it back the other way. The clowns on TV went to Cultural Marxism school so they’re not trained journalists. They’re trained socialists. This means they’re experts at propaganda and controlling the populace while having little or no interest in the truth.

On Tuesday, July 5, cops shot a Blood named Alton Sterling. The next day, police shot Crip Philando Castile. The media immediately played judge and jury, claiming Castile was “black and in the wrong place” and the Sterling case is proof that we “perpetuate racial group inequity.” This kind of talk harks back to Jesse Williams’ recent BET speech wherein he warned, “We are going to have equal rights, or we will restructure their function.” Consider our rights restructured, Jesse. Instead of saying, “Oops,” our politicians continued the media’s big lie by blaming everyone but the criminals themselves. Minnesota governor Mark Dayton said Castile’s killing was straight-up “racism.” Hillary chimed in soon after with “Alton Sterling Matters. Philando Castile Matters. Black Lives Matter.” After this kind of self-serving rhetoric exploded in Dallas, Obama doubled down, claiming the shooting was caused by “powerful weapons.” Then Jesse Jackson blamed Trump.

Black lives matter, but so do the facts. Yes, innocent blacks are killed by police. I estimate about a dozen unarmed black men are killed by police each year, but only a small portion of them were not resisting arrest. How many were completely innocent is difficult to determine, but let’s say half. That means the threat of killer cops ranks up there with spider bites. The number of cops killed is over eight times higher. The stats get shifted around because blacks represent only about 13 percent of the population yet commit about half of all violent crime.

The mainstream media and politicians who poured gas on the fire are culpable for the five officers we lost in Dallas Thursday night, but that doesn’t mean we absolve the black murderers…

…The left is petrified of this kind of thinking not just because they fear another Nazi party but because they themselves are National Socialists. They know that finding genetic differences means genocide because that’s the way they handle problems. In a sense, they’re scared of their own system and the ruthless punishments it will inflict. The beauty of being a small-government conservative and a libertarian is this stuff never comes up. We don’t care what your group’s genetic predispositions are. If you personally can do the job, welcome aboard. If you can’t, well, sorry, but welfare is only going to make things worse. We’ve seen what happens when the elites try to control people with propaganda and lies. It starts race wars. It may hurt journalists to know they wasted their time in college learning the merits of Marx, but it’s the truth. Like them he was a spoiled brat who never worked, and his system doesn’t work. Here in the real world we’ve learned the only thing that works is freedom, and that includes freedom from government programs meant to fix us. We’re losing our heads right now and socialism is a big part of it. Remember, if you’re not a socialist before you’re 25, you have no heart; if you are a socialist after 25, you have no heaad.

tom hunter

Violence against police officers is becoming epidemic. In Tennessee, Lakeem Scott shot four people, including a police officer, because he was “troubled by recent events involving African-Americans and law enforcement officers in other parts of the country.”

In Georgia, earlier today, “a phony 911 caller ambushed a patrolman when he responded to the suspect’s request for help.” The Georgia Bureau of Investigation “said a motive for the shooting is not yet clear, but did mention the similarity between the crime and the shootings in Dallas.”

This morning in suburban St. Louis, “a motorist shot an officer three times as the officer walked back to his car during a traffic stop.” The officer is in critical but stable condition.

So far in 2016, 34 police officers have been murdered in the line of duty, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, most by gunfire and others by vehicular assault. Many more have been wounded.

Is it any wonder that the NYPD turned their backs on another left-winger – NY mayor DeBlasio – during the funeral of Officer Wenjian Liu who, along with partner Rafael Ramos, were shot at point-blank range in 2014 by some guy claiming it was revenge for the killing of Michael Brown.

As the saying goes, this is going to worse before it gets better.

Funny how all the people who screamed their guts out about the “toxic environment” of speech created by the GOP that led to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, are nowhere to be found in the middle of this terror. I guess what the Black Lives Matter movement has said has nothing to do with the dramatic increase in attacks on cops.

President Barack Obama’s Republican adversaries piled on the criticism on Friday after he turned the overnight Dallas police massacre into a political platform – and then grinned from ear to ear as he reconnected with world leaders at a NATO summit in Poland.

Kimbo

@ tom hunter

As the saying goes, this is going to worse before it gets better.

Similar to the conditions and psychology that gave rise to the inner city riots in American cities in the mid-1960s. Give the unremitting message without any nuance or perspective that the “system” is stacked against minorities and they are nothing but victims, fail to mention “responsibilities” when you yell for “rights”, and then factor in the over-promising and under-delivering of the Civil Rights Act and the Great Society, and hey presto!

tom hunter

One of the many depressing things about this is how it may affect the Dallas Police, who apparently have done a pretty good job of community policing in recent years. That likely has much to do with the Chief – David Brown – who looks more and more impressive every time I see him.

Since the Ferguson protests in 2014, there has been a lot of reporting about the devastating effects on the poor that come from the aggressive enforcement of traffic infractions and other petty crimes. Brown was ahead of the curve here, too. Between fiscal 2007 and fiscal 2013, the number of traffic tickets issued in Dallas dropped from 495,000 to under 212,000. That’s a massive cut. Brown reassigned traffic patrols to beats he felt were more conducive to public safety.

Absolutely fucking right. But this has made that a lot of tougher. Not just the shootings in Dallas but across the USA will be causing a lot of cops to get twitchy on their handguns but also – as shown above – back off this sort of policing that makes a difference and go back to the traffic ticket crap:

In the past few years, we’ve seen appalling examples of cities stepping up enforcement of petty laws — often at the expense of policing for violent and property crimes — to help make up for budget shortfalls. Brown rejected that approach.“The purpose of traffic enforcement is to improve traffic safety, not to raise revenue,” Brown told the Morning News. “We don’t believe the citizens of Dallas want its police department writing citations to raise revenues.” The drop in citations did not cause a noticeable change in accidents or roadway fatalities.

Again – absolutely fucking right. There’s been a lot of “thoughts and prayers” for the fallen officers. But mine are also going out to Chief Brown. Right now he surely must be feeling like he’s been hit in the guts and be questioning whether it’s worth carrying on. I hope he does.

Give the unremitting message without any nuance or perspective that the “system” is stacked against minorities and they are nothing but victims,

Oh but there are votes to be gained. You’d think a party that garners 95% of the Black vote might feel it had some room to ease up on the incitement-victim shit – but what if they don’t turn up at the polls? You must get people angry and fearful – like the Left is always telling the Right they should not be doing.

Odakyu-sen

“The left is petrified of this kind of thinking not just because they fear another Nazi party but because they themselves are National Socialists. They know that finding genetic differences means genocide because that’s the way they handle problems. In a sense, they’re scared of their own system and the ruthless punishments it will inflict.”

An interesting thesis.

Is the lock-step mindset of the Left more likely to induce genocide in response to acknowledged racial differences? Or is denial the only safe route for them?

Do Conservatives leave it to Law & Order to sort out the Good from the Bad of any race?

Have been so many “shot for being black” incidents on the news in recent years. I am surprised it has taken until now for something like this to happen.

The U.S. is a fucked up, systemically racist theocracy. It’s no wonder the Islamic state makes them uncomfortable, it must be like looking in a mirror.

I’m not surprised that the information age has brought about an organised push-back. I’m just surprised that the black community has waited with restraint for this long and just put up with being second-class citizens and getting arrested/shot for being black left, right and centre.

It’s sad and there are no winners. But let us not pretend for a MOMENT that this shooter hatched his plans and carried them out in a benign vacuum.

nasska

Obama is a token and a member of the political elite. A figurehead for the liberal waste of space class. Ohh look at us, we’re the generation that elected the first black president, aren’t we ENLIGHTENED?

I’m only surprised it has taken this long for something like this to happen.

Social Media has enabled large, effective push-back against racist theocratic police states in places like Egypt, Libya etc, why would the U.S. expect anything different?

Democracy means the government is meant to obey the people, not the other way around. Hopefully one day the U.S. will get this, and then the world might be a better place.

Kimbo

@ RRM

Obama is a token and a member of the political elite. A figurehead for the liberal waste of space class. Ohh look at us, we’re the generation that elected the first black president, aren’t we ENLIGHTENED?

What a pile of shit! Obama and his political ilk harangued and lectured and virtue-signalled furiously to garner the vote on the basis it was “Change you can believe in” and still America is racist, even and including because they voted for him?! Starting to see why most are wearied and well-beyond identity politics? No matter what you do, you are racist/sexist/homophobic/privileged.

Social Media has enabled large, effective push-back against racist theocratic police states in places like Egypt, Libya etc, why would the U.S. expect anything different?

Democracy means the government is meant to obey the people, not the other way around. Hopefully one day the U.S. will get this, and then the world might be a better place.

Again, what a load of shit – America is not a direct democracy (i.e., rule by the mob), but instead a representative democracy governed by a formal constitution with checks and balances on not on its elected officials, but also her people.

The alternative you appear to be proposing Shawn is that ALL the “young black man shot today by police for no real reason” stories we have been seeing weekly for years and years are ALL radical black agenda propaganda. ALL of them.

“is that ALL the “young black man shot today by police for no real reason” stories we have been seeing weekly for years and years are ALL radical black agenda propaganda. ALL of them”

No, but in reality most were shot for good reason, and it’s a result of the amount of violent crime young black men engage in, and the amount of violence that youg black people engage in generally.

Read the book ‘White Girl Bleed A Lot’ and find out how much black violence occurs against white people in the US. Every single day.

But many black leaders and white apologists for black racism don’t care because they are racists themselves. Beating up and shooting white people happens every single day in the US and Liberal-Left racists could not care less.

The US has a race problem. It’s black racism, black violence, and it’s promoted by a racist black President.

Reid

tom hunter

Sheesh. Now I can see why you’re happy with a Trump presidency; the place is fucked beyond redemption.

Besides that you’re accepting the same argument in relation to Black American that you reject here in NZ when it comes to Maori crime rates – but it’s the same ideology.

You should read that article I linked to earlier today about my old home town: Chicago on the Brink. It explains in some detail that the message of the BLM and the ACLU – and now you – is a lie. There will always be racist pricks in every part of society, but it is a lie to say that in 2016 racism is endemic in American police forces.

If it’s TLDR for you, you might consider looking at the quotes I extracted earlier in this thread, but I’ll one brief one because of its source:

In May 2016, a 38-year-old drug trafficker named Toby Jones received a 40-year federal prison sentence for repeatedly trying to gun down a federal informant, in the process shooting three people.

He told the judge: “Even with all the latest police shootings on minorities in Chicago, I don’t blame these cops one bit for most of their decisions in the field. And the black community has to first come to grips with why these cops are so afraid,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Stories of heroic cops go untold, Jones said, “but as soon as a black kid gets shot, everyone is in an uproar.”

The more Blacks that die in the shittier parts of Chicago, the louder the voices grow to try and get the cops back. I can only hope that is the case.

“ES Shawn because Obama is SUCH a radical black power firebrand. You only have to listen to him..”

Which you obviously haven’t been doing. And if you think a guy who happily and for years sucked at the tit of radical racist black “pastor” Jerimiah Wright is some kind of “token” who does not hate white folks enough for you, then you REALLY haven’t been paying attention to reality at all.